


We, the Universe

by skyshadedblue



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-23 13:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3769501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyshadedblue/pseuds/skyshadedblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In days of old, the moon had a lover. He was of muscle and sinew, full of quiet mirth and cautious stolidity in equal parts. He was strong in power and spirit, often shifting forms from human to sly fox to cunning snake to unyielding wolf.</i>
</p><p>-</p><p>Derek has always dreamed about the wolf and his moon lover, and Stiles has always dreamed about the moon and the earth, and shapeshifters and gods. When Stiles saves Derek from a resurrected Kate Argent, they learn their dreams are connected and that the dreams are not dreams at all.<br/> <br/>Canon compliant up to S2 (with a few tweaks).</p>
            </blockquote>





	We, the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic when I first got into TW like three years ago and never had the motivation to finish it, _but_ my goal since then has been to get this story done and posted... so, in posting the prologue, my hope is to get the kick in the butt I need to achieve this goal... even though I'm doing tw reverse bang plus another writing class project in the works... Needless to say, posting will be sporadic YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
> 
> Just fyi, the prologue is just a canon replay prelude, but from Derek's pov. The main story is going to be alternate canon.
> 
> Keep in mind tags will be added/changed as the story updates. Will eventually be prologue+(tentatively) 3 parts and (definitely) rated E. Unbetaed.

0.

 

_In days of old, the moon had a lover. He was of muscle and sinew, full of quiet mirth and cautious stolidity in equal parts. He was strong in power and spirit, often shifting forms from human to sly fox to cunning snake to unyielding wolf._

_The moon loved him like no other and he loved the moon in kind a thousand fold. Other spirits seethed with hatred, but there was one who burned with an intense jealousy, wanting to keep the moon for themself, a Trickster. They told the lover of a rare flower in the world of man, told him the moon’s desire for such a beauty, such a show of love. He agreed, not knowing that once he crossed the threshold from the spirit world, he would not be able to return. He shifted to a wolf’s form to hide his spirit nature from human eyes, traversed into the other world and knew at once his mistake, howled for the moon, made clear his sense of loss. But no matter how he bayed, the moon would not be his to hold ever again._

 

1.

 

Derek wakes with a tremble down his body, worn sheets tangled about his legs.

The air is still, waning moon low above the horizon, but the screen of his phone is lit up with a missed call. Several, in fact.

For a second, he considers clearing them all because there’s only a handful of people who have his number and he can surmise each unimportant, inane reason why any one of them would contact him. It is 4 in the morning and inanity can wait.

But he’s awake, and he can’t fall back asleep. Laura said she’d be gone a week and Derek had been gracious enough to allow a day’s leeway. The moon is at its apogee and he can feel the distance without his Alpha to anchor him.

He sits up and scrolls through the list, None of them are Laura, except--

_Beacon Hills, California_

\--and a new voicemail from hours ago.

_Hello, Mr. Hale, I’m calling in regards to a request from your sister--_

Derek listens, breath caught in his throat, as the man rattles off his name and direct line, ends with a ‘good-bye’ that leaves him lost and winded. He has his pillow in a vice grip and dials the number without a second thought.

 

The forest smells the same.

Derek didn’t expect it to have changed, but he supposes he might’ve.

His family’s scent had gone from this place, long before he’d left the first time. Burned to ash with the rest of everything he’d ever loved, only Laura and he the sole survivors.

But now it’s taken her, too. Nothing left but a corpse defiled and broken in the fashion of hunters. They were not her killers though.

No, he could smell the Other on her body, could smell treacherous defeat and feel the pull of the delicately twisted bond to an Alpha unfamiliar.

Derek is old hand enough to resist it, but another odor fills the forest, pervading his senses. Fear and blood come together in a peculiar mix, but one he knows from long ago. A bite had taken; a wolf had been made. A wolf that has returned to proximity.

And not alone.

He follows the two boys, listening to their chatter as they trudge around looking for the new wolf’s now-defunct inhaler they’ve already passed by at least three times. They don’t have any information useful to him, and it further grates him that his new wolf brother doesn’t seem to be aware of what he is yet.

The bite is a gift, and for an Alpha to have bitten pack without letting the human know what he’s getting into is incomprehensible.

What’s done is done though. Derek picks up the inhaler, and heads in their direction.

“What are you doing here, huh? This is private property,” he asks, startling the pair. The wolf cannot recognize a brother yet, still unfamiliar with his new senses, but the human goes wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

“Oh, sorry, man, we didn’t know,” the human says, suddenly.

His wolf brother glances at his friend and speaks. “Yeah, we were just, looking for something, but...” He seems at a loss and looks up at Derek, eyes immediately bending to a furrow. “Uh, forget it.”

Derek doesn’t have the patience for this and tosses the inhaler in his direction. He walks back in the direction of the house, but stops when the human’s distant clamor reaches his ears.

_“Dude, that was Derek Hale! You remember, right? He’s only like a few years older than us.”_

_“Remember what?”_

_“His family? Burned to death in a fire like 10 years ago.”_

A pain, from deep in his chest, fills him. Derek presses it down and away, like the image of his sister’s disjointed remains, lit by daybreak as he performed the burial rites.

He runs.

 

2.

 

Derek’s been back in this godforsaken hellmouth for no less than a week and fucking Kate Argent shoots him in the goddamn arm with goddamn wolfsbane. Fuck his life.

Fuck it all because there is no one left. If you don't count Uncle Peter. Derek doesn't. What use to him is a comatose burn victim--particularly one of his own making? Derek doesn’t deserve to be helped, but he needs to live, just until his obligations are fulfilled. He pushes his body to get to somewhere safe. Anywhere.

He thinks of Scott, his wolf brother, who rejects the very idea, who doesn’t trust him. He has no choice, neither of them do. Derek needs him, and if Scott has any common sense, he’ll know he needs Derek, too.

He heads towards the school and overhears the Argent girl. Scott will be studying at her house after school. Opportunity.

Derek spots Stiles, Scott’s friend from the preserve and walks into the lot, halting traffic. He doesn’t remember, can’t recall the conversation they have before Scott runs over; only that there is irritation and manhandling of his weakened body into the Jeep’s passenger seat.

Derek attempts to regain control, but hangs on by the thinnest of threads, Stiles’ incessant whining grating on him. He’s not proud, but threats spout from his mouth through gritted teeth. Next he knows, he’s in a vet’s office with knowledge that the poison running through his veins is a rare form of monkshood that will kill him soon if not properly treated. Everything his mother taught him races through his mind as he pants out instructions to bring back a bullet containing the bane.

The wait is punishing. Derek doesn’t have faith that Scott will pull through, and he’s so close to gone; he succeeds in convincing Stiles to amputate his arm--but Scott comes barreling in with the bullet.

The relief that washes over him is so strong, he blacks out.

It’s a near thing until Derek’s jaw throbs absently, but he is conscious.

Derek, for the barest of moments, thinks this might just be the atonement he’d been seeking. His voice is wrenched from his throat in searing and blinding agony as he presses the wolfsbane powder into his arm where Kate’s bullet left its gaping mark.

When it stops--when the pain dulls to a steady buzz throughout his body, sweat slick, with his chest rising and falling in uneven drags--his head and eyes still pound with the unrelenting need to survive.

Then, he remembers that he did.

He is.

Surviving.

“That,” Stiles says, “Was _awesome_. Yes!” His heart beats a quick and constant thrum.

Derek sits up, and doesn’t try to read it as unexpected relief or whatever human reaction it’s meant to be.

“Are-are you okay?” Scott asks.

“Oh, except for the agonizing pain?”

“Guessing the ability to use sarcasm is a good sign of health.”

Derek’s eyes fall into an instinctual glare, anger filling up his chest until his ears follow that quick rhythm again. He chooses to ignore it because he can’t do anything else, too riled up by Scott’s blatant and bull-headed mistrust of him.

 

When Derek was very young, his parents kept close proximity to each other, always. His father, his mother's silent and ever-present shadow.

Their hearts beat as one. His mother-alpha had taught him to read the steady thrum of hearts, to recognize the smallest tics of emotion.

 _Don't just hear. You must_ listen, she said, _and you must watch._

Laura was quick to take to it, and quick to use it to her advantage. She used every slightest hint of affection to latch onto a person for however long it took friendship to blossom, for attachment to take, to seek out what a human loved best and mould them to her satisfaction. Not in a malicious way. More to the effect of seeing to one's needs, whether it be cheering someone up by presenting them with toys or candy they liked, or even just paying attention to them when they needed to be paid attention to. Friendly, normal things.

Derek was never so attuned to anyone--not even his family. He'd been able to parse simple lies and truths, but not much else. His mother had told him he would meet someone one day that would open his mind to the old ways. She hadn't counted on Kate. Of course, he hadn't either.

It is a failing he takes to heart every day.

Derek, in fact, regrets everything up to this very moment.

“I’m gonna kill both of you. What the hell was that! What are you trying to do, attract the entire state to the school?”

He can't even begin to fathom what Scott was thinking as he and his poor excuse of a sidekick attempted the most stupidly ridiculous plan to draw out an Alpha. The Alpha-cum-veterinarian they already had held hostage in the back of his car, to be precise.

“Sorry, I didn’t know it would be that loud,” Scott says.

“Yeah, it was loud. And it was _awesome_!”

Derek considers just exploding in apoplectic rage. “Shut up.”

Stiles scoffs. “Don’t be such a sourwolf.”

“What’d you do with him?” Scott says, voice suddenly low and panicked.

“What?” Derek turns around and sees Deaton gone. “I didn’t do anything.”

Stiles’ heart is abruptly the loudest he’s ever heard. It thrums through him, he's barely able to sieve it from the throb of his own twisting gut. He can do nothing but focus on that uncontrollable erraticism as Derek's body is lifted up, and blood spews from his mouth.

And then silence.

 

3.

 

"Get in!"

Derek feels a burning fill his chest as he jumps in his car with an incompetant teenager at the wheel.

"What part of laying low don't you understand!" Scott yells.

"Damn it, I had him!"

"Who, the Alpha?"

"Yes! He was right in front of me and the friggin' police showed up."

"Whoa, hey, they're just doing their jobs," Stiles cuts in, but Derek's glare cuts him right back out.

"Yeah. Thanks to someone who decided to make me the most wanted fugitive in the _entire state_."

"Can we seriously get past that? I made a dumbass mistake, I get it."

"Alright!" Stiles flails his arms in from the backseat. "How did you find him?"

Dereks shakes his head, scoffing.

Scott doesn't even pause. "Can you try to trust us for at least half a second?"

"Yeah, _both_ of us," Stiles says. Derek throws back another glare. "Or just him, I'll be back here."

Derek ends up telling them what little he knows.

He doesn't have much choice in the matter. He did die the once and as much as he'd hate to admit it, without these two reckless kids, he wouldn't last long enough to be of any help to this cursed town.

It's not comfortable. Dying. It's even less so to wake up and find your reputation laid to waste by your allies, and if Stiles makes another wolf-related quip--

"I don't need this vilification," Derek snaps, cutting Stiles off .

"Them's mighty big words for a wolf."

Derek resists the urge to groan his frustrations into his hands. "This isn't a Western, Stiles."

"You turned it into one when you used the term 'vilification," he snorts, but nearly throws himself out of the car when Derek growls.

The low buzz along his temples turns heavy, into an uneven pounding Derek doesn't understand.

 

4.

 

_A wolf runs through a forest. There is nothing to fear, nothing to evade. The trees sway along a moonlit path._

_There is the moon, watching the wolf._

Derek wakes.

The incessant buzz at the base of his skull becomes increasingly inescapable. It's gotten worse since the night he became Alpha. From the moment Kate took her last breath until now, this thrum of nothingness that he somehow knows he can't satisfy... It burns him cold.

He begins to fear it's not a coincidence. His wolf howls for a pack and he cannot resist the call.

 

Derek's seen him before. Several times, actually.

In the beginning, he and Laura would visit the grave sites every week. He always walked behind Laura, made sure she saw Mom first. He never spoke to them aloud. He didn't want his sister to hear, to know what he'd done.

They'd leave flowers. It wasn't much, but it comforted them somehow. And every week, Derek knew the gravedigger's son would help clear out the offerings before the week was out.

The bruises are a new development, the smell of fear and sadness lingering. The bite would be the gift it should be.

To all of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading (:


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